What I meant by 'being in the same boat' is that we would all be dealing with the same disaster, whether that meant a flood, hurricane, tornado, etc. Everyone would be struggling to keep it together. And people do tend to help each other out where they can, for the most part. During the flood here in Nashville people with boats were helping rescue those trapped, in Florida where I grew up people with chainsaws helped clear downed trees after hurricanes, cleared roads and so on. Of course there are always opportunists who seek to make money off of the victims of disasters, which I doubt would change under a different political system. Some people are just bastards.

Katrina was an absolute cluster-fuck if there ever was one. I was living overseas at the time and wasn't aware of the gun confiscation, but New Orleans has been a bastion of corruption forever, so it doesn't surprise me. I did a search and it appears the local police were rounding up guns, not the government, per se. The handling of the disaster is a perfect example of how not to do things. Gut instinct tells me that there were ulterior motives behind it, paranoid as that may sound to some. I'm not a huge fan of government, large or otherwise, in general. But I'm also not naive enough to think that lack of government is the answer either. Our particular two party system doesn't work. I would prefer a parliamentary system (perhaps) that forced more accountability and cooperation. And we need a more informed populous that is willing to get involved and police the corruption. How to accomplish that . . . I don't know.

That article was just plucking away at semantic components of a few studies. The motive for the petty misdirection was likely to muddy the waters and further hide the problem. (Clearly, many people have incentive to hide the problems, as demonstrated by the many comments here celebrating the assault on people's reproductive systems.)

The reality is that the dozens of counter studies he referenced in that article, macro data on plummeting birthrates, associated studies on the quality of sperm and the bizarre female-to-male ratio, and, to just be anecdotal and subjective here: the fact that it seems everybody is having a bitch of a time simply procreating - the most natural act of any species....all of these things demonstrate that the problem is urgent.

Truthfully, smoke jobs like that article (which only nitpicked a few studies rather than demonstrating its own thesis) just make me think that the assault on human reproductive health is indeed being engineered intentionally rather than being some happenstance accident. (But I guess the issue of whether the plummeting fertility, as diagnosed by the World Health Organization, is intentional or accidental is a separate matter.)

Wow. This thread has turned into yet another internet thread dominated by creepy childless people who want everybody else to be childless. I explicitly requested you unnatural, sterile, barren people not post here in the OP because of your tendency to dominate internet threads with your anti-human philosophical ramblings. (All the useful people are too busy tending to their children to get in these dumb arguments, apparently.)

So I don't want to get into a discussion about "overpopulation" because experience has taught me that you people tend to be fundamentalists and fundamentalists just don't care about information or ideas. You're convinced that "Mother Earth" has "too many people" and some external force must stop people from fulfilling the most Primal need of all: procreation.

You're ignorant of human resourcefulness, economics, environmental history, Moore's Law, and countless other vitally relevant concepts. It's not my job to educate you, and experience has taught me that there's no point in it, anyhow.

Suffice to say: Just don't have children and keep your creepy, impotent and barren hands off my body and my family's bodies.

Anyway, this thread was started because of a frightening study showing that, globally, sperm levels are dropping so rapidly that the World Health Organization has had to drastically recalibrate to get a new "average", which is about 8% of what the average was two generations ago. I don't know what's causing this epidemic of sterility, but I actually hope that it's something related to diet so that it can be solved. Any ideas or solutions are welcome.

have not read the thred however this planet is overpopulated for our current level of civilization and maturity... let nature take its course

Thanks for the absolutely useless declarative statement. You could've just started it with, "Hark!" or "I declare!"

And if you really think there are "too many people", well, charity starts at home, as they say!

(Funnily, my dad just got back from a week-long kayaking trip on Lake Superior. So last night he was talking about it and he kept on carrying on about how desolate and remote the region is, how you can drive, hike, bike, and kayak around for days on end without seeing a single other human being. Needless to say, most people get really lonely really quickly, and race back to the city. For those people who think there are too many people, you can move up there. Or Montana, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Alaska, etc., etc., etc.)

(Also, please don't actually kill yourself. I believe all life is sacred.)